


To Bare One's Heart in the Shallows of Flesh

by whimsicalwombat



Category: The Blacklist (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, One Shot, S4 internal commentary, Soulmate AU, product of procrastination and midnight ramblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-01
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-08-14 03:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16484915
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whimsicalwombat/pseuds/whimsicalwombat
Summary: Soul marks appeared on their skin on their fifth birthday. Why the fifth of all possible birthdays was a question asked constantly and answered never, but the marks were always beautiful, intricate, and most curious of all; they could move.And for as long as she could remember, Samar had wanted her mark to appear just to see what it would do.





	To Bare One's Heart in the Shallows of Flesh

**Author's Note:**

> Yeah ok, I don't even know where this one came from, aside from midnight rambling conversations with the ever fabulous beta; NamelesslyNightlock. Regardless; enjoy! :)

Soul marks appeared on their skin on their fifth birthday. Why the fifth of all possible birthdays was a question asked constantly and answered never, but the marks were always beautiful, intricate, and most curious of all; they could move.  

They could disappear from one limb and reappear on another at random. The picture itself could move depending on how they felt or how close they were to their other half.  

Everyone had one somewhere, though not every soulmate was romantic.  

Some kids in small towns found the person with the same mark in the same classroom as soon as their fifth birthday passed, and quickly became firm friends well before the idea of romance could even start to cross their minds. Others had to spend years exploring halfway around the world to find their soulmate.

Others watched their mark fade into their skin as their soulmate passed, burdened with the misery that they would never meet and instead be cursed to a life of never knowing true love.  

Some questioned whether finding their soulmate was destiny or by simple chance. Some gave up hope of ever finding them and opted to settle for simple contentment with another, while others logged pictures of their mark in online databases, hoping desperately to find a match.  

Life went on.  

The day he turned five, a winding jasmine vine began to creep up Aram's arm from his wrist, a tiny bird nestled calmly between the leaves. For the most part, and unlike the ever-fidgeting marks of those in his class at school, his mark remained still, though occasionally it vanished from the open canvas of his arm, instead winding its way around his ankle, carefully hidden by his sock.  

At such a young age, and without it doing anything overly interesting, he didn't pay the mark much attention.  

As Aram grew, so too did his curiosity. He stared at that curious bird on the vine, wondering why on earth that mark of all marks had come to him. Some people had stars that twinkled and shined when their soulmate was nearby. Others had animals that prowled majestically across their skin.  

And he had _flowers._  

It did nothing at all to help him when the other kids called him a dork and pushed him into lockers.  

His only –and limited- solace were the clues he could gleam from his mark's curious movements. The little bird in the picture remained still, telling him that whoever his soulmate was, she was far away... And on those few occasions that the vines hid themselves away, they chilled his skin, sharing her fear with him.  

When he was thirteen, his mark went into hyperdrive for the tiniest of moments before settling, going very still. The vines wrapped tight around his ankle, cold as ice, with the tiny bird burrowing as deep as it could amongst the leaves. It stayed there like that, etched almost as permanently as a tattoo for a year.

And Aram knew; whatever had happened to his soulmate then, was life changing.  

Over the years the chill seemed to fade away, only coming back for moments here and there. The mark moved back and forth around his body, but that little bird always stayed still.  

It wasn't until Aram was in his twenties, a newly minted MIT graduate and shipped off to a cozy new cubicle at the NSA that the tiny bird fluttered its wings and hopped from leaf to leaf for the first time. He did a double take, staring at it in disbelief, and wondering if it was real.  

For three days the bird didn't stop. It drove him crazy, fluttering all over his body like an itch that couldn't be scratched, while the leaves of the vines waved gently back and forth as if swept up a rousing sea breeze. His soulmate was there, somewhere. Not that Aram knew where 'there' was, exactly, but it was certainly closer than she had ever been before.

And then all of a sudden she was gone again, and the bird went still.  

A couple of years later it happened again, and then again maybe six months after that. All he could gleam from that was that she was travelling, and perhaps that meant she would be the one to find him. Spurred by hope, he uploaded a picture of his mark to the haven of his online world, wondering if it would help... But no response ever came.  

Eventually he transferred from the NSA to the FBI, and life went on.

A year or so after that, and he could have sworn the tiny bird was on a sugar high. Wherever the mark was on his body, it was pleasantly warm and more vibrant than Aram had ever seen it before. Some days the vine spiralled madly around his arm, some days it spread all over his chest, and other days the tiny bird fluttered up to his shoulder as if wanting to say hello.  

It was as if the damn thing never shut up after that.  

The day the vine began to creep around Samar's foot was one she had been waiting for, albeit naively. She loved the matching constellations on her parents' skin that shone vividly, almost glowing with joy any time they touched. It was a game for her and Shahin that filled their parents with adoring amusement; pestering their mother to press a soft kiss to their father's cheek or begging their father to twirl their mother around and start dancing in the living room, just to watch those tiny stars begin to sparkle on their skin.

For as long as she could remember, Samar had wanted her mark to appear just to see what it would do.

At that age she never realised what her parents were protecting her from; that in some parts of the world, love was a shameful, impractical thing, and the soul marks had to be hidden away, likely never to meet their other halves in favour of other unions instead.  

Her parents were the rare, lucky few who had found one another in spite of it all, and though they wished her a similar fate, there were no guarantees.  

And to add insult to injury, as she grew and grappled with the twisted mix of fascination and resentment for the beautiful, floral vines across her skin, the bird nestled amongst them never seemed to move.  

Even Shahin's mark, the strange, swirling spiral that it was, seemed to move from time to time... While her tiny bird remained still, almost as if asleep for all eternity.  

The day her parents died, all hope faded into the depths of despair. Samar screamed at her mark in blinding, devastated frustration. She wished it would disappear, scratching at it and covering it with every possible layer to hide it from view. No hope or idea of love seemed right after that day.  

Her mark, taking the hint, wound its way narrowly around her ankle, hiding out of the way until finally, she began to heal.  

Years passed, where Samar tried to forget about that disappointing bird nestled amongst the vines. Flings during Mossad training came and went; each as perfectly pleasant and contently satisfying as the last, but none of them serving the true passion that could only come from the one who bore the same mark as hers.  

It wasn't until her first Mossad assignment to DC that the tiny bird began to move. As soon as she stepped off the plane, its eyes snapped open and its wings slowly outstretched. It fluttered and hopped back and forth across the vines, stopping Samar in her tracks. She stared at the flowers, suddenly wrapped loose and comfortable all the way up and down her arm and swaying gently in some imaginary breeze, with her brow furrowed in curious confusion.  

_So that was what it was supposed to do..._

Whoever her soulmate was, he was around there somewhere.  

Every time her job took her back to DC after that, Samar's shoulders tensed with impatient anticipation until the moment she landed... And every time she did, the vines seemed to blossom, but never more so than when she tracked Raymond Reddington by his earth-toned ties.  

After that, the tiny bird never sat still.

Aram's mark drove him crazy. The first year with the Reddington taskforce passed and not only did his mark refuse to calm down, but instead its movements only seemed to intensify. His soulmate had either never seen his pleas to find her on the online database or she had simply chosen not to reply, but the tiny bird hopping from leaf to leaf didn't care about that. It could sense its counterpart nearby somewhere and it was _determined_ for Aram to know it too.  

For the most part, the fluttering back and forth across his skin at least remained contained under the suit he wore to work, endlessly distracting him but thankfully, nobody else... But sometimes, just sometimes, when his mark felt particularly stubborn in trying to make its presence known, it peeked out. Aram's hand would start to go warm and he would look down, letting out a sigh of exasperation at leaves on winding vines creeping out from one sleeve and starting to sneak around his fingers, or his neck would grow hot for a moment in the split second warning that fluttering wings were about to zoom out from under his collar.  

All he could do was mutter to it with as much discretion as he could muster, avoiding Ressler's bewildered stare, as he begged that curious mark on his skin to go back under his shirt like it was supposed to before anyone saw.

Not that he knew it, but every time Aram argued with the little bird, Samar's ruffled its feathers happily, a cozy warmth of amusement spreading across her skin under the gently swaying leaves.  

But that did nothing to help them find one another. Firm friends, but otherwise completely different from anyone they had ever dated before, they assumed all too easily that their comfortable dynamic simply came from the sheer amount of time spent stuck in the war room together, just like the working relationships they had with everyone else. That their marks moved more since joining the taskforce told them both that their soulmate was someone they saw daily now, but between security guards, admin staff, couriers and all the other agents around, there were far too many people who fit that general description to narrow it down by simple presence.  

Stubborn as ever though, Aram's mark carried on with its antics for years, determined that if he wouldn't listen, perhaps it could reveal itself instead.  

The first revelation came a few years into the taskforce's operation, long after Aram had ever given up on figuring out who in the building he was supposedly destined to find.  

His neck began to grow warm, and then so did his cheek. The warmth crept up his face, across his nose, and all the way up to his forehead. Aram's eyes went wide; he recognised that warmth and knew exactly what was about to happen next. He had all of ten seconds to get out of the war room and find somewhere private before he would be faced with never being able to look any of his co-workers in the eye again.  

'Uh, I'm just going to go-' Aram swallowed, his brain blanking on a plausible lie in the panic that had his heart racing '-copy some files.' He darted from the war room and around the concrete columns, only just managing to stop himself from practically _sprinting_ to the safe haven of the spare copy room. Most people in the war room paid him no attention, too busy engrossed in their own work just as they usually were.

Only Samar glanced up, furrowing her brow in contemplation at Aram turning past her and quickly disappearing from view.  

She knew his mysterious mark gave him grief from time to time, and especially since he had started seeing the girl from his gym, but this was getting ridiculous.  

'Ok, come on. She's around here somewhere, I _know._ You've made your point,' Aram urged under his breath. The copy room door pulled shut behind him and Aram lunged for the opposite side of the small space, clasping a single, desperate hand over his forehead where those vines were hurriedly starting to stretch across. 'But can you just calm down for five minutes? We have a serial killer on the run. I need to concentrate and whoever you're trying to point me towards probably does too, so _please-'_  

The tiny bird, now front and centre on his forehead, ruffled its feathers in utter indignation.

'-Ok, don't look at me like that. I can _feel_ you glaring at me.' Aram let out a sigh, and the bird simply bobbed its head in smug satisfaction. 'To you, finding her is the most important thing and nothing else matters,' Aram went on, his voice quiet but firm all at once. 'But to us humans there's a whole lot more at stake. You distract us while we're working, and one or both of us could end up killed. Do you want that?'  

He paused, letting that sink in for a moment. The bird hopped reluctantly from leaf to leaf, head tilted in thought... Until the vine began to retract; winding its way down from his forehead, over his cheek, and tucking itself around his neck.  

'Mmhmm. That's what I thought.' Aram's eyes fell slowly closed for a moment, and he let out a deep breath of relief. He steadied himself, allowing the tiniest hint of a sympathetic smile to tug at his lips. 'You can come out later, ok?' He said softly. Within a nanosecond his forehead seared hot again and it took everything Aram had not to groan under his breath. 'No, not right _now-'_  

He clasped one hand quickly over his forehead all over again, but not before the copy room door pushed open and Samar poked her head around the edge.  

Aram could only hope he had moved fast enough that she hadn't seen it.

'Everything ok?' Samar asked. She stared across the room at Aram, standing there with his shoulders tensed and one hand slapped in a frenzy across his forehead.

And then the breath caught in her throat.

Peeking out from between two of Aram's fingers was the end of a vine... With a small, feathery tail hopping along the leaves and back under his hand.

It wasn't the whole picture, but it was more than enough for someone who had the exact same mark to recognise what it was.

Samar's stomach flipped a somersault, but she forced herself not to react. Aram clearly didn't want her to see it, and he was involved with somebody else. Almost instinctively, her fingers curled into her palm, tugging down the end of her jacket sleeve to protectively cover the mark setting her wrist aglow. She had always wondered who around the building had the same one, and even dreamed of the moment they would find each other... But this was not it. This would be messy, heartbreaking, and way too complicated for comfort.  

'Samar,' Aram gasped, startled by her sudden appearance. 'Uh, yeah, I'm fine. I'm just-' he gaped, struggling to find the words.  
'-Stuck with a stubborn one?' Samar finished for him. But her voice was quiet, almost too quiet with the strain of trying to sound sympathetic as if she hadn't seen a thing, when in reality all she wanted to do was run out of the room and scream her frustration from the top of a mountain.    
'Yeah, something like that.' He quickly replied. 'I'll, uh, be back out in a minute. Sorry.' Samar held his gaze for a moment, the overwhelming mix of emotions swirling uncomfortably in her gut, before giving a short nod.

She closed the door between them again, resting back against it as her shoulders slumped miserably. She glanced down at her hand, watching on as the tail end of a vine began to slide, ever so slowly, out from under the edge of her sleeve and coil around her palm. The little bird drifted along the leaves into the centre, staring up at her curiously.

'Don't even try, little bird,' Samar murmured, 'he's not interested in finding you.' She let out a sigh, jaw clenching bitterly. 'If he was, he wouldn't argue with your other half or give up hope to the point that he's just trying to settle with someone else.' The little bird ruffled its feathers and narrowed its eyes, deep in thought.

Samar had no idea what that response was supposed mean but whatever it was, she was sure; this was not how finding her soulmate was supposed to go.

Both marks simmered down in their frenzied movements after that. Whether their owners knew it or not, the two marks sensed that something had changed between them. Samar's patience for Aram grew shorter and shorter, until she snapped at him, utterly and unapologetically bewildering him no matter how much she knew better. It had been too easy to adore him; at first it was an amusement by his sweet but awkward nature, but as every year had passed, so too had her affection for him. To find out that it was he who bore the same mark was no longer the surprise it would have been had he revealed it earlier... But that was what made it all the more painful.  

She loved him, and the marks emblazoned across their skin should have made it easy, but either he didn't want her or he was at least pretending not to.

And Samar honestly couldn't decide which of those hurt more.  

Their friendship deteriorated by more and more each day, not that Aram for the life of him could figure out why. Worse still, the girl from the gym who he was so fascinated by was cheating on him. It was right under his nose, and even Samar knew it, but Aram was too blinded by her beauty to see it.  

It wasn't for months, when Samar found Aram slumped on the sofa in the break room with his face in his hands for an entirely different reason this time, that a guilty chord struck somewhere deep inside. For all the frustration, all the bitterness, she couldn't bear to see him upset. She sat warily beside him, the air between them quiet at first until Aram's voice, barely audible, escaped his muffling hands.  

'You knew she was cheating on me, didn't you?' Samar bowed her head, instantly regretting the stupid feud she had allowed to sweep them up in.    
'Yes.' Aram's hands dropped to his knees and he turned, staring dejected back at her.    
'Why didn't you say anything?' He asked quietly.    
'Because you were so happy,' Samar murmured back. 'Until you knew, you were happy.' She bit her lip, wistfulness furrowing her brow. Giving a quick shake of her head, she began to slowly push back her sleeve, revealing the vines winding around her wrist, tingling her skin. 'And then there's this-'

Aram's eyes went wide. His lips formed a small 'o' of surprise. One hand reached out instinctively, his fingertips softly tracing the winding vines across her skin until his own set his arm aglow to match. Samar reached out, running her hand along the soft stubble of his jaw. She pulled him towards her, sliding her arms over his shoulders and around the back of his neck as his lips crashed joyously against hers...

Their marks had never felt so beautifully warm without the vines slithering, uninvited onto open skin, or the tiny bird hopping impatiently from leaf to leaf. But when wrapped around each other, their bare, glistening skin peeking out from the tangled mess of sheets, and their hearts beating as one in passionate, breathless satisfaction and relief, the way the marks glowed was an entirely new sensation.  

_Finally, they had found each other._

Samar curled into Aram's side, one hand draped gently across his waist with her head tucked against his shoulder. Aram's arms wound close around her, his fingers entwined with hers. Deep breaths let in and out in perfect synchronisation, the utter bliss of having found each other washing over both of them until it was overwhelming.

And as they laid there, completely at peace with the silence as both of their eyes fluttered slowly closed with slumber, the flowers glowed along their skin. Vines crept gently along, outstretched down Samar's arm and all the way across Aram's chest to where their hands met, resting there, until the vines joined as one... And two tiny birds flew with gentle ease over the blissfully swaying leaves, meeting right in the centre. Their two feathered heads nuzzled gently against one another, happy and relaxed at last.


End file.
